


into yawning daylight

by pcnine



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 18:19:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11949960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pcnine/pseuds/pcnine
Summary: Éponine makes too many detours to the fourteenth arrondissement for Azelma's liking.





	into yawning daylight

Éponine leaves in the morning whilst Montparnasse is still sleeping. Half a pot of coffee sits on the table where she’d sat and drank a mug, swinging her legs absently and staring at the plants on the windowsill. He’s full of such fucking contrasts. Leather jackets and lip balm. Knuckledusters in the glove compartment of his car and herbs on his windowsill. Vodka bottles lined up in the cupboard like a battalion of soldiers and cat-patterned socks.

 

She texts him as she walks home, dodging nine-to-fivers on the pavements of Rue Bonaparte, Rue Sainte-Anne, brushing past early-rising tourists on le Pont du Carrousel. There’s a _chink_  sound when she puts her phone in her pocket - a tube of lip balm.

 

**_à: montparnasse_ **

_sorry i had to go_

_gotta make sure gav actually goes to school_

_hope ur hangover isn’t too bad_

It’s a long walk from his apartment in the fourteenth arrondissement back to the eighteenth, where she and Azelma and Gavroche share a tiny house with Grantaire and Bossuet. It takes her around an hour if she lengthens her strides, an hour and twenty if not. Today will take her an hour. She dallied too long in Montparnasse’s kitchen as he slept, laughing at him, his contrasts, being charmed by him, his contrasts, and she needs hurry if she’s going to get back in time to walk Gavroche to school to ensure that he doesn’t skip out on the way there.

 

Besides, walking with only her own thoughts for company is exhausting.

 

She steals a slice of toast from Gavroche’s plate when she enters the kitchen and grins as he pouts. Azelma gives her a knowing look over the top of her mug of coffee, eyeshadow perfect beneath her arched brows. Éponine tugs self-consciously at her hair - she hasn't even brushed it yet and she can still feel Montparnasse’s fingers in it. She washes her face in the bathroom sink next to Grantaire, who’s still rubbing sleep from his eyes, flicking through his phone as he brushes his teeth, and then chivvies a reluctant Gavroche out of the door, complete with at least one of his exercise books.

 

He manages to whine throughout the whole of their twenty-minute walk to his school, about how fifteen-year-olds shouldn’t receive this much homework, about how he hates the _brevet_  marking system, about the asshole who sits behind him in chemistry class. In the middle of a rant about his history project, she receives a text.

 

**_de: montparnasse_ **

_tell gav i said hi_

 

“Montparnasse says hi.”

 

“Were you even listening to _anything_ I said?” Gavroche demands.

 

“Of course I was,” Éponine says. “But you’re getting your _brevet_ , I don’t care what you think. You need it, Gav.”

 

He rolls his eyes as they reach the school gates. “Sure thing.”

 

She smacks his shoulder, back of her hand against his shoulder. He’s been working out with Grantaire recently and it’s showing in the thickness of his frame, the thick curve of muscle over the socket of his shoulder. It makes her shudder, makes her proud. “I’m serious. You need a fallback plan for the future.”

 

He must see something in her - a tightness across her mouth, the shiver in her throat that tingles silver on her tongue - because he gives her a hug. She inhales sharply with surprise. “I’m trying, I swear.” 

 

She squeezes back. He’s taller than her already. “Good.”

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Azelma calls her at eleven, when she knows that Éponine is on her break at the Musain bar. “Did Gav get to school okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Éponine replies. “I got treated to another monologue about how much the _brevet_  sucks.”

 

Azelma snorts, undignified. “I’m surprised that he doesn’t get bored with how much he whines about it.”

 

Éponine just breathes. Waits for what she knows is coming.

 

“Please tell me that you weren’t at Montparnasse’s last night."

 

There it is. “Zelma, we’ve had this conversation.”

 

Her sister’s voice is cold. “If you can indulge Gav in complaining about his exams at every waking moment, I’m sure that you can handle me telling you that Montparnasse isn’t good for you.”

 

Éponine sighs. Leans her head against the cool steel of the fire escape, wishes half-heartedly for some of the whisky behind the bar downstairs. She hates this fight. “There’s no emotion in it.” She’s lying. “He’s not going to break my heart.” Now she’s not.

 

“Oh, really?” Azelma’s tone conjures images of her eyebrows shooting into her hairline and Éponine’s heart is sinking, sinking. She’s going to end up pissing Azelma off, she’s going to be sulking over her dinner tonight and shooting glares at Éponine. Twenty-two and she’s less mature than Gavroche after an argument. “He’s just a fuckbuddy, is that it? You’d go to the fucking _fourteenth arrondissement_ for a quick fuck?”

 

“Zelma, please -“

 

“He’s a fucking criminal! You deserve someone better than that.”

 

Éponine’s temper frays and she hangs up, turns her phone off so that Azelma can’t call back and continue the argument. Éponine doesn’t have anything new to say and she’s not fond of wasting her breath. She’s tried explaining it to Azelma before; there’s no hierarchy of _deserving_. There’s nothing that makes one person deserving of another, no way to quantify how good a person is and therefore their suitability for another. There’s no reason why someone with criminal leanings, someone with knuckledusters in his glove compartment and cat-patterned socks inside his combat boots, isn’t as worthy of Éponine’s time as a pretty rich boy, full lips and freckles and boarding-school graces, awkward, fumbling, utterly oblivious. She’s forgiven Azelma for pushing her to pursue Marius - late-night murmurs over coffee of _he seems sweet,_ lunchtimesandwiches and _he’d be good for you_. She hasn’t forgiven Marius for the heartbreak, though. Thick shards in her chest, a coagulating throat, dull gunmetal stomach for months. The fact that she doesn’t spend hours staring at the backs of her hands is new. The questions - _how had he not seen, how had she been so foolish as to pretend so hard and for so long_ \- are quieter now. The heartbreak is healing.

 

She returns to the bar after her break subdued, lips slicked with balm. Musichetta notices her downturned mouth and smiles, asks after Gavroche, calls her _darling_ and swaps Éponine from run to bar because she knows that Éponine hates being runner. Éponine is grateful to her and loses herself in the rhythm of a quiet bar, cleaning glasses and checking stock levels between orders for wine, fruit juices, a couple of gin and tonics. Manages not to slice herself as she chops the cucumber for the Hendrick’s.

 

“Thanks,” she murmurs at the end of her shift as she hangs up her apron.

 

“Anytime,” Musichetta smiles, dark eyes creasing at the corners. “I’m not asking you to tell me, honey. But whatever it is, I’m sure that you’ll ride it out. You’re tough.”

 

Éponine scrapes up a smile and turns on her phone as she leaves, turning left out of the Musain on her way to her shift at the office where she translates between French and Arabic. There’s a text.

 

**_de: montparnasse_ **

_i know a small restaurant_

_are you free for lunch?_

She has an hour before her shift starts.

 

 

-

 

 

 

Small restaurant, her ass. A white tablecloth spills over her knees, thick linen, and the waiter’s lips purse above his starched shirt collar as he takes in her scruffy black jeans and tank, the messy sweep of braids onto the top of her head. Contrast to Montparnasse: a perfectly tailored suit in a crisp purple, gold accents, gold cufflinks. Gold undertones to his dark skin that she missed seeing this morning - his veins can catch sunlight till he is radiant with it, and it makes her feel like she’s still dreaming every time.

 

She realises that her hands are still tacky with orange juice from bartending and wipes them surreptitiously on her thighs. There’s more cutlery on the table than she knows what to do with and the flowers in the vase are real. Their scent sticks in her throat.

 

“What can I get you?” The waiter is still flicking frowns in Éponine’s direction. “We have wine, water -“

 

“A glass of wine and a change of attitude would be lovely,” Montparnasse cuts in. It’s the same glass-smooth tone that Éponine remembers from a childhood of learning tones - her father’s rough voice, Ivorian accent thickening to herald a storm; her mother’s sickly simper that meant that no shelter could be found in her arms tonight; Cosette’s soft whispers, begging for friendship - and it’s at odds with the benign smile on his face. It’s the tone that he uses when he’s asking for money, all polite with a switchblade in his left hand, fingers of his right hand tapping on his thigh. He plays jazz melodies on his legs, he once told her. She’d asked about the piano in the living room after they’d had sex on the sofa and he’d taken her hand, laced his fingers with hers and whispered into her shoulder that he had always loved jazz. Of course he had.

 

“What did your parents think of that?” she’d asked.

 

He’d shrugged, all fluid, jarring with the tight set of his jaw. She reached out to touch and felt the muscle relax under her fingertips. “I give fewer fucks about my parents than you do.”

 

The waiter blanches at Montparnasse’s tone and leaves.

 

“Thank you."

 

“What for?” he says, tilting his head to the side. Bright eyes. Bright smile, genuine because it exposes the dimple on his left cheek. “Apparently the fish is incredible here.”

 

Éponine twists her fingers together. Sticky. Something glimmers in the region of her chest, something sharp and bright and loose. “I like fish.”

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

She gasps into his mouth. Long fingers slipping inside her, thumb nudging at her clit, his voice low and broken in her ear. She scrabbles at his back, blunt fingers tumbling down the piano-ridges of his spine. He moans, all melody, hands all rhythm, throat vibrating against her jaw. She’s wound so tightly that she can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t conceive of a world that isn’t narrowed down to the man above her.

 

She whines and he laughs, cocks his wrist just so and she’s gone. Faintly, she hears him call her _Ponine_ , and it doesn’t occur to her that no one has called her that since Marius started dating Cosette until two days later. Right now, she’s breaking open, ribs bared and hips fracturing. Her knees ache and she trembles and he holds her, holds her so tight and gentle despite the fact that he hasn’t gotten off yet. When she comes to, there are fingers circling lazily on her sides. Plucking glass from her lungs.

 

They’ve held guns, those hands. They’ve dealt drugs and they’ve dealt death. They’ve dismantled corpses into bones and stacked the evidence amongst the catacombs barely a block from this apartment. And now they hold her how she was taught to hold hymn books by her mother.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Two days later, Azelma presents her with a tube of lipstick. Matte, a dusky red. “I’m sorry.”

 

Azelma has always given presents when she feels guilty. When she was younger, she would collect bouquets of flowers, stolen from manicured gardens and given in a jam jar. She stopped doing that after she was caught trespassing, dragged home by the scruff of her neck to face their father, who’d been furious that his son had brought the cops to their door over _flowers._  He still doesn’t know that Azelma isn’t a boy - she’s never told him that she prefers _elle_  to _il_ , simply started transitioning when she left for university and hasn’t been back. Shortly after that incident, she began baking to apologise. Éponine still isn’t sure if Gavroche deliberately picked fights or not when he was in junior high in order to convince Azelma to bake. And when Marius broke her heart, Azelma had bought her a necklace, fine and golden and beautiful against Éponine’s collarbones. She’d given it to Éponine with shaking hands, clammy fingers, tears running down her cheeks. No makeup, eyes red and tired, skin washed out despite the melanin. “I’m so sorry, Ép, I never thought,” she’d whispered.

 

Today, Éponine takes the lipstick. She knows that Azelma isn’t trying to buy her forgiveness - her sister knows her too well for that. It’s more that Azelma needs a physical representation of her apology, like it’s not real unless she can hold it in her hands and then place it in Éponine’s palm. “It’s okay.”

 

“No, I - I forgot that you have the right to make your own decisions. I felt that after Marius, I had to, like…” She trails off, tears shining in her eyes before she wipes at them with the pads of her fingers. “I felt responsible for you getting hurt and I don't want you to be hurt again. I don’t trust Montparnasse, but - you know what you’re doing, Éponine, I’m sorry.”

 

Éponine pops the lipstick up out of its tube and tests it on the back of her hand - thick, creamy. It’s expensive, which means that Azelma feels incredibly guilty. “It’s okay. I’m sorry to worry you.”

 

There’s an awkward moment - Azelma tucking her stubbornness back between her ribs, Éponine swimming in relief with red lipstick on her hand - and then they’re hugging and Azelma is sniffing into Éponine’s neck and it’s good, it’s right, it’s how they’ve always been. Symbiotic, close, the wedges between them due to their similarity as sisters rather than their differences. Azelma smells like lemon shampoo and it’s right.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

The Amis meet at the Musain five days later, a Friday when Éponine is bartending. It’s hot for spring and Éponine is sweating with her braids down, but she forgot to pack her foundation in her bag this morning and Musichetta had tapped the side of her neck when Éponine walked in - a hickey. She’d flushed brilliantly and Musichetta had just laughed, asked who the lucky partner was.

 

Éponine had shown Musichetta her lock screen, which had made the other girl’s eyes widen - it’s a very obviously post-fuck photograph of Montparnasse’s head and neck, dark skull in a tangle of sheets. “He’s cute. Jesus.”

 

Éponine smiled. “He’s alright.”

 

Musichetta just raised her eyebrows. “Honey, if your stone-hearted ass is calling him ‘alright’, he’s a fucking catch. Keep him.”

 

He’d dropped her off a block away from the Musain this morning after she stayed the night, kissed her hard before she got out of the car. She’d pushed her tongue into his mouth, felt him sigh against her. “Thanks.”

 

“No problem,” he’d murmured. One hand still in her hair. He’d tugged hard last night, pulling her head back as she moaned until her throat was bare, and the roots were still somewhat sensitive. It was a good ache, one that settled in the vicinity of Éponine’s right kidney. Now, five pm and waiting for the Amis to arrive, she touches the hickey again, presses till it stings and tucks her hair over it.

 

Musichetta watches her do it, smiling, then says, “I’m knocking off, if that’s alright. I’ll be back for the meeting, I want to see the boys, but you’re in charge of the bar, okay?”

 

Éponine nods and Musichetta returns in half an hour - the Amis still aren’t here, and the only patrons are a pair of squabbling pigeons outside the front door and an elderly couple nursing a bottle of red wine - in a short dress, pretty eyeliner. Éponine mock-whistles and Musichetta slaps her arm, tells her to shut it. Éponine laughs silver-bright and retrieves the lip balm from her pocket, applies it carefully.

 

Somewhere after five thirty, the Amis begin to file in. Enjolras is close to spitting fire, as usual, asks for coffee and burns his tongue on it. Courfeyrac, Bossuet and Grantaire arrive together, laughing about something that’s bringing a blush to Courfeyrac’s pale cheeks. Grantaire gets a gin, the Botanist, and Éponine spends a while cutting the thyme for it, lost somewhere in this morning’s memories of Montparnasse kissing her on the kitchen counter. He’d made omelettes with thyme, salt, pepper for breakfast and she’d looked between his herb collection and his leather jacket, laughed. When she wrapped her legs around his waist, the butt of his gun had dug into her thigh.

 

She’d rolled her eyes at him. “Really?”

 

He’d shrugged. “Something’s got to pay the bills.”

 

Joly and Combeferre turn up ten minutes later - they must have come from a lecture together, both of them medical students - and Combeferre makes a beeline for Enjolras, already pulling sheaves of paper from his bag. Musichetta leaves Éponine at the bar to drop herself into Joly’s lap as soon as they sit down. Éponine winks at them and they just smile back, a hand on Musichetta’s waist. Jehan is absent, at some supplementary lecture, as are Marius and Cosette, but due to a vomiting sickness making the rounds of the literature department, according to Bahorel. Joly begins to fuss and Musichetta lays a hand on their thigh, comforting. Éponine’s gut twists.

 

**_à: montparnasse_ **

_are you free tonight?_

Montparnasse’s reply takes a while to come - she stares at the three grey dots on her phone for a good couple of minutes.

 

**_de: montparnasse_ **

_yes_

_want to come over?_

_à: montparnasse  
_

_yeah_

_is ten pm okay?_

**_de:_** montparnasse

_yes_ _!_

_see you soon_

The exclamation mark makes her blood warm. She doesn’t think about it, just pours Grantaire a generous whisky and winks when he complains about how tight Enjolras’ jeans are.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Éponine is frying onions for a pasta sauce when Gavroche sidles up to her in the kitchen. Grantaire and Azelma are playing cards at the table - it’s fierce, as usual, and Azelma is already swearing. They’re so loud that Éponine almost misses it when Gavroche murmurs, “I got a sixteen in my history project.”

 

She drops the spoon into the pan. “You did _what?”_

 

“I got a sixteen,” he says, more loudly, and Éponine seizes him, squeezing him around the waist so hard that he coughs. Her heart is swelling in her chest, beating so big that she’s sure Gavroche must be able to feel it.

 

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispers. “See what you can do when you concentrate?”

 

She releases him in time to see him stick his tongue out at her. “I had help.”

 

Grantaire drops his cards on the table in defeat, looks over. “Is that the project you were working on with Jehan?”

 

Gavroche nods.

 

Grantaire looks at Éponine. “Jehan barely did a damn thing on that project. He literally just proof-read it and corrected spelling.”

 

Éponine doesn’t smell the onions burning until Azelma yelps at her, tells her to turn the gas off. She’s just staring at her little brother - her brother, who played in the gutter when they still lived in Montreuil; her brother, the boy who drums on every flat surface that he finds; her brother, who has struggled with dyslexia and shifting letters on the page for so many years. Gavroche, her brother, who nailed a sixteen out of twenty for his mid-year history essay.

 

She cries and blames it on the onions.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

“Five pm is way too early to be getting shit-faced,” she says.

 

Montparnasse takes a swig straight from the bottle, then pours a generous amount of the vodka over his knuckles. He doesn’t make a sound, just winces. “You don’t have to drink.”

 

“Like hell I’m not drinking,” she replies and takes the bottle from his hand, pours herself three fingers’ worth and downs it.

 

He touches her wrist. “Are you okay?”

 

She chugs half of the glass. Feels it slide down her throat, golden warmth seeping through her stomach. Closes her eyes and sees freckles, red lipstick, a flash of blonde hair. “I saw Marius and Cosette today.”

 

His hands tighten on his jacket, just for a moment. The splits in the knuckles of the left one widen, then seep shut as he relaxes. He drops his jacket onto a chair and sits on it. “And?”

 

“And it didn’t hurt.” The last shard of glass drops out from beneath her chin, chimes as it lands on the floor. She watches it glimmer. “It didn’t hurt at all. I thought that I loved him so, so much and I thought that I’d never get over the heartbreak. And I did. I literally don’t care any more.”

 

When she pulls back from kissing him, she thinks that she sees a tear in his eye, but then he’s got her bottom lip trapped between his teeth and she lets herself be reeled back in.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Jehan sits at the bar as they wait for the rest of the Amis to file in. Courfeyrac has texted ahead and said that he’s going to be late, something about moot court running over and long-winded defence openings that had made Bahorel wince in sympathy, and Bossuet is running late from a hospital appointment. He taps on the stem of his wine glass before catching Éponine’s eye. “You look better.”

 

She just smiles, dusky red lipstick stretching wide. “Thanks.”

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

“I want you to meet my sister,” she says, more into the pillow than to his face. She hadn’t been able to look at him when she said that she loved him, five minutes ago. She’d stared at the hollow of his throat instead, at the golden veins there. The dark skin there that her fingers and lips know.

 

“I thought she hated me.”

 

Éponine gestures to the lipstick stain on the collar of his discarded shirt. “That was her apology to me for bitching about me seeing you.”

 

He picks up the shirt, takes his time admiring the stain it just to piss her off. “Your sister has a good eye for colour.” His eyes drop to her mouth. “It suits you.”

 

“And Gavroche would love to meet you,” she continues.

 

“I’d be a bad influence.”

 

 

“And I’m not?” she shoots back.

His thumb swipes across her mouth. It’s covered in red when he takes it away. She’s been biting her lip, too. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

He kisses her. “I’d love to.” He kisses her again, and again, and again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> the fourteenth arrondissement of paris contains montparnasse, the geographical area, and ofc montparnasse would buy an apartment in a region with which he shares a name
> 
> rip this is so short but anyways i was clearing out my wips and here this was


End file.
